Sam’s mom smiled at Sam in the rearview mirror. “So are Dad and I invited to this party?” she asked.
“Sure,” Sam said. “You could even carry the cupcakes over to Mrs. Kerner’s house.”
Sam leaned back and counted. If his mom and dad came, and if Gavin got back from soccer on time, there would be seven people at the party. Eight, if you counted Mrs. Kerner. Sam didn’t know whether to be excited or really nervous. Maybe agreeing to have a party for Mrs. Kerner hadn’t been such a great idea.
Don’t forget, he reminded himself. You’re doing this for Rudy.
Sam took a deep breath and let it out. He had forgotten about Rudy and the compost pile. He forgot there was a reason for the streamers and the party hat and the red sprinkles and vanilla icing and not getting to eat his frozen waffles right after school.
Having a reason made it all worthwhile.
Say Good-Bye to Your Vegetable
They had less than one week left of their vegetable unit in science. This was probably a good thing, Sam thought at school on Wednesday. Even Gavin’s new carrots looked old, and Will’s head of cabbage had lost most of its leaves.
Caitlyn’s potato still looked okay, and so did Marja’s eggplant, but Caitlyn and Marja never took them out of their cubbies anymore. They didn’t take them on walks at recess like they had the first week of the vegetable unit.
Next Monday the class was going to start a unit on the solar system. People were already talking about what planet they wanted to do their reports on. It was like their vegetables had never existed.
“I hope you have enjoyed this science unit,” Mr. Pell said when everyone in Room 11 had put their lunches in their cubbies and hung their backpacks on their hooks and had taken their seats and stopped their talking.
“I think we’ve learned a lot,” he went on. “We have learned about how things grow and how important the vitamins we get from vegetables are and why plants need rain. What else have we learned?”
Emily raised her hand. “We’ve learned how our bodies digest vegetables.”
“Very good,” Mr. Pell said. “What else?”
“That some vegetables get rotten faster than others,” Rashid said.
Mr. Pell nodded. “That’s true. Anything else?”
Sam looked around. No one raised their hands. He didn’t know if he should say what he wanted to say. What if it was dumb?
He thought about Rudy in his house of compost—compost that Sam had spent his hard-earned money to buy. He thought about the compost bin in Mrs. Kerner’s yard, where microbes and bacteria were slowly turning potato skins and carrot peels into dirt.
He thought about the smile on Rudy’s face.
Sam raised his hand. Mr. Pell pointed at him. “Yes, Sam?”
“I learned that vegetables are our friends,” Sam said. “Even if they get rotten. All you have to do is put them in a pile, and sooner or later, they’ll make more dirt. And then you can grow more vegetables to eat.”
“An excellent point, Sam!”
“We should make our own pile,” Marja said. “My mom said that when we’re done with our vegetable unit, I should just throw my eggplant away.”
“Mine too,” said Caitlyn.
“Mine too,” said Will.
“No fair,” Emily complained. “I already ate my green bean!”
“I already ate, like, ten of mine,” Gavin said. “But I still have a few more.”
“I think making a compost pile with our vegetables is a great idea,” said Mr. Pell. “I wonder where we could put it.”
Sam looked around the room. He saw a lot of excited faces. He saw a bunch of people who had old and tired vegetables that needed a good home.
He raised his hand again.
“Yes, Sam?” Mr. Pell said.
“I have a plan,” said Sam.
Sam the Man and the Rutabaga Plan
On his way to Mrs. Kerner’s birthday party, Sam stopped by his garage and picked up Rudy’s box. Rudy was going to the party too.
“You’ll have fun,” he promised as he carried Rudy’s box across the street to Mr. Stockfish’s house. “There’ll be chickens and cupcakes and lots of other vegetables for you to talk to.”
Sam had decided to think of the compost bin in Mrs. Kerner’s backyard as an apartment building for vegetables of all shapes and sizes. A broccoli crown might live in one apartment, and next door might be a family of potato peels. Every couple of days things got stirred around, and the broccoli crown and the potato peels found themselves in new apartments with new neighbors. It seemed to Sam like an exciting way to live.
He thought Rudy would enjoy it there.
Mr. Stockfish met Sam at the front door. He was wearing a tie for the second Saturday in a row, but this week he smelled more like a pumpkin pie than a Christmas tree.
“Did you bring the cupcakes?” Mr. Stockfish asked Sam.
“My mom’s bringing them,” Sam said. “I took over the games this morning.”
“Did you decorate the way we talked about?”
Sam nodded. This morning Sam had hung the red-and-white streamers from the chicken coop, and he and Annabelle had strung blue-and-white lights in several of the trees near the deck. The chickens had clucked happily when they’d turned the lights on.
“Decorations make all the difference at a party,” Mr. Stockfish said. He patted his pocket. “Okay, I’ve got my present. Let’s get moving.”
When they got to Mrs. Kerner’s house, Gavin, Emily, and Rashid were waiting for them in the driveway. They each had a present in one hand, and a paper bag in the other.
“What do you have in the box, Sam?” Emily asked. “Is that your present for Mrs. Kerner?”
“No, the party is my present,” Sam said. “This box is where my rutabaga lives.”
Gavin ran over to Sam. “Can I see the worm poop? Does it stink?”
“It doesn’t have any smell at all, and it just looks like dirt,” Sam said. “But you can look if you want.”
“It makes sense that it looks like dirt,” Gavin said as he peered into the box. “Worms eat dirt, right? So they probably poop dirt, too.”
“Worms eat a lot of things,” Mr. Stockfish told Gavin. “Not just dirt. You should study vermiculture.”
Gavin looked confused. “I should study worm-a-culture?”
“No, verm—” Mr. Stockfish shook his head. “Forget it. Let’s go around back.”
They all followed Mr. Stockfish into Mrs. Kerner’s backyard. A bunch of people were there, including Mr. Pell and most of the other kids from Room 11, Sam’s parents, Francine the mail carrier, Curtis the grocery store’s bag boy, and Annabelle. The chickens were clucking loudly and bumping into one another inside the coop. Sam could tell they were excited. He guessed this was their first party.
Mrs. Kerner was wearing a crown made out of aluminum foil. She looked more like a queen on her throne than just a regular person sitting in a deck chair. When she saw Sam she waved and called, “I can’t believe how many people are at my birthday party!”
She pointed to her crown. “Your sister gave this to me for my birthday. I feel very royal.”
“You’re queen for a day!” Mr. Stockfish said. He walked up the steps to the deck and pulled a small white box from his pocket. “And every queen should have her chariot.”
Mrs. Kerner took the lid off the box and looked inside. Her face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. “Oh, Mr. Stockfish! How did you know?”
“What is it?” asked Sam. “Is it an actual chariot?”
“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Kerner said. She showed Sam the box. “It is a Hot Wheels 1965 red Ford Mustang convertible. Exactly what I wanted!”
“I thought you wanted a real one,” Sam said.
Mrs. Kerner shook her head. “I don’t like to drive if I don’t have to.”
Sam felt disappointed. If he’d known Mrs. Kerner would be happy with a toy car, he would have gotten her one.
Mr. Stockfish put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Don
’t worry about the car,” he whispered. “This party is the best present. I bet your parents are proud of you.”
Sam was pretty sure this was Mr. Stockfish’s way of saying he was proud. But Sam pretended he didn’t know that. He didn’t want to make Mr. Stockfish grumpy on such a happy occasion.
“It’s time to play charades,” Annabelle announced. She had come up onto the deck and was standing next to Mrs. Kerner’s chair. “Everyone gather around, and I’ll explain how.”
Later, Sam had to admit that the students of Room 11 were not great at charades. He thought maybe charades wasn’t the best game for second graders. To play charades you had to be good at counting the number of syllables in a word, and you had to remember that when someone said “little word,” they meant “the” or “at,” not “cat” or “pot.”
They were also not the best at Authors. Authors had too many rules. But Mrs. Kerner, Mr. Stockfish, and the other adults seemed to enjoy playing Authors very much. So Sam and Gavin and the other kids from their class got cupcakes with vanilla frosting and red sprinkles and went to look at the chickens.
“Do all the chickens have names?” Caitlyn asked. “Because if they don’t, you could name one after me.”
“Or me,” Marja added, and then everyone was saying, “Or me!”
“They all have names,” Sam said, “so they can’t be named after anyone.”
“Could you name an egg after me?” Caitlyn asked.
“It will get eaten,” Sam said.
“That’s okay,” Caitlyn said. “But could you make it a blue one?”
“Sure,” said Sam.
After everyone finished their cupcakes, Emily said, “I think it’s time to do our plan.”
“But you don’t have a vegetable anymore,” Rashid reminded her.
Emily opened her paper bag and pulled out a green bean. “I got a new one,” she said. “I didn’t want to be the only one who didn’t contribute.”
Everyone got their bags. Sam got his box. He led the way to the compost bin. “So, guys, this bin is full of leaves and vegetable peels and chicken manure,” he said. “One day it will be dirt. But it won’t be just any dirt. It will be the best kind of dirt to grow flowers and vegetables.”
A few kids clapped.
“Now we are going to put in our vegetables from our science unit,” Sam went on. “And next year we’ll add the compost from this bin to our school garden. Who wants to go first?”
Emily raised her hand, but Gavin said, “You should go first, Sam. It was your idea.”
Sam reached his hands into Rudy’s box. It had been a week since he’d last seen Rudy, and now he was a little bit afraid. What if Rudy had gotten brown and mushy? What if he didn’t look like a rutabaga anymore? Closing his eyes, Sam pulled Rudy out of the dirt. Keeping his eyes closed, he patted Rudy to see if he felt the same. He did! Sam smiled.
Emily gasped. “I can’t believe it!”
Sam’s eyes popped open. Was something wrong with Rudy?
He looked down at his hands.
What he saw was a rutabaga.
It was half purple and half yellow.
It was about the size of a softball, with a little brown stump on top.
It had green leaves growing out of its little brown stump.
It had green leaves growing out of its little brown stump?
It had green leaves growing out of its little brown stump!
“Rudy’s still growing!” Sam shouted.
“Rudy’s still growing?” Emily asked.
“You heard him!” Gavin yelled. “He’s still growing!”
“I thought all our vegetables were dead,” Will said.
“Not this one—this one’s alive!” Sam said. He held Rudy up over his head, like he’d just been named Vegetable Champion of the World.
Now Sam wanted to show Rudy to someone who wasn’t in second grade, someone who knew a thing or two about rutabagas.
He saw Annabelle standing by the chicken coop, talking to Leroy.
“Look at Rudy,” Sam said, running over to her. “He’s got leaves!”
Annabelle looked. “He sprouted,” she said.
“So he’s still growing, right?”
Annabelle nodded. “Looks that way. You should plant him in the school garden.”
Sam thought about this. If he planted Rudy in the school garden, he could visit him every day at recess. Or at least he could visit his leaves, since most of Rudy would be underground. Which meant Rudy’s face would be underground, and Rudy’s face was Sam’s favorite part of Rudy.
Only Rudy didn’t really have a face, did he?
“You know what the most confusing thing about Rudy is?” Sam asked Annabelle.
“What?” Annabelle asked Sam.
“He’s not actually a person. But I keep thinking he is. It’s hard to make decisions about a vegetable when you think it’s a person.”
Annabelle nodded again. “I’ve noticed that. Once, Mom put a cherry tomato in my salad, and I named it Margaret. And then I couldn’t eat it. Couldn’t eat her.”
“And you love cherry tomatoes,” said Sam. “You always get extra when we go to a restaurant with a salad bar.”
“I guess I just loved Margaret more,” Annabelle said.
Sam thought for another minute.
“Do you think I should eat Rudy?” he asked when he was done thinking.
“No, I think that would be weird,” Annabelle said. “I think you should grow him.”
Sam thought so too. And when he told people he was going to look at the school garden, he’d say, “I’m going to see my rutabaga” instead of “I’m going to see Rudy.”
He looked at Rudy with his new head of leaves. “You’re okay being a vegetable and not a person, right?”
Rudy looked at Sam with his half smile, half frown. He didn’t seem to hear what Sam was saying.
Maybe that was because he didn’t have any ears.
Maybe that was because he was a rutabaga.
“But you’ll always be my rutabaga,” Sam told him. “And I’ll always be happy we were friends.”
“Come on, Sam. We’re getting ready to compost!” Gavin called from the other side of the yard.
Sam set his rutabaga down in the dirt next to the chicken coop. He—it—would like it there. Rutabagas liked dirt.
Especially rutabagas that still had some growing to do.
It takes a village to raise a rutabaga, and I deeply appreciate Caitlyn Dlouhy for making sure we didn’t end up with turnips instead. Thanks also go to the marvelous Alex Borbolla, the supremely talented Amy June Bates, the divine book designer Sonia Chaghatzbanian, and star copyeditor Clare McGlade. As always, Justin Chanda is my hero.
A big tip of the hat to Sam’s first big fan, Xyrell Goldston, star reader! Finally, big love to Clifton, Jack, and Will Dowell, and to Travis the dog, who keeps me company while I write.
FRANCES O’ROARK DOWELL has never met a rutabaga she didn’t like, though she occasionally mistakes them for turnips. She’s the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of many novels, including Dovey Coe, Trouble the Water, Chicken Boy, Sam the Man & the Chicken Plan, The Secret Language of Girls series, and the Phineas L. MacGuire series. She lives with her husband and two sons in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com.
When AMY JUNE BATES was a kid, she loved to draw and read. She’s drawn art for many books for kids, including Patricia MacLachlan’s Waiting for the Magic. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her three children, her husband, and Rosebud the dog. She still reads and draws quite a bit.
A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster • New York
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
authors.simonandschuster.com/Frances-ORoark-Dowell
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Also by Frances O’Roark Dowell
Anybody Shining
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bsp; Chicken Boy
Dovey Coe
Falling In
The Second Life of Abigail Walker
Shooting the Moon
Ten Miles Past Normal
Trouble the Water
Where I’d Like to Be
The Secret Language of Girls Trilogy
The Secret Language of Girls
The Kind of Friends We Used to Be
The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away
From the Highly Scientific Notebooks of Phineas L. MacGuire
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Blasts Off!
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Erupts!
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Cooking!
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed!
The Sam the Man series
#1: Sam the Man & the Chicken Plan
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Frances O’Roark Dowell
Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Amy June Bates
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Sam the Man & the Rutabaga Plan Page 4